


It Had To Be You

by human_wreckage



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Sigyn POV, blend of MCU and Norse mythology, edited edition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 15:31:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5253569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/human_wreckage/pseuds/human_wreckage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At what point does wifely devotion become consuming? An overview of the life as the wife the realm forgot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Had To Be You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gallons_of_the_Stuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallons_of_the_Stuff/gifts).



> Beta'd by Gallons_of_the_Stuff.  
> Original version can still be found on FFN under the author makesausername (also me).

He was a murderer and a liar.

                He was a megalomaniac and egotistical, and—as she had come to understand—filled with a deep, deep self-hate that was as much about his family as it was his race. He was a complicated being, but it hadn't always been so. He'd been a boy once, with a stupid, arrogant older brother that went out of his way to compete with him. Their relationship was antagonistic, for sure, but brotherly, nonetheless, and she had been a girl who disliked them both, at first. That changed slowly, with their sharing of time in Asgard's palace library, then with their practicing magic together wherever they had time and space. They were both teased for spending so much time together—neither old enough to think more of it than anything else. If she had any inkling what they were teasing about, it might have made things different between them. But she'd never been one to drop a friend once she had made them.

          It was as they grew into young adults that she realized that those feelings—the flutter of her pulse, the butterflies in her core, the day-dreams of blue eyes and black hair—were seedlings of love. She told him, one night, in Odin's gardens, that he was the only one she would, or maybe could, love. It was a nervous declaration, sincere but almost fearful because it was her heart she was wearing on her sleeve. She'd either given him a knife or asked him to safeguard it. How could she quantify her surprise when he had kissed her in answer?

          He asked for her hand quickly after that and she was overjoyed to tie herself to him. They had stood at an altar, she in a white and gold gown, marked with his green. He wore green with gold and was handsome beyond measure. They made their vows and the ceremony drew to a close; they were bound. Bound more closely than she had let herself believe they would ever be. She was happy—overjoyed, even—and yet, their wedding night eclipsed that happiness with ease.

          The stars had been out for hours as their hurried breaths mixed. She had tried to keep herself from wondering what it would be like. Wondering how it would feel to be tangled together, touching, kissing; fitted to each other like two halves of one whole. The reality of the night was better than anything her innocent mind could have conceived. He was gentle with her, but only up to the point she whispered, " _Please_." Then her mind was on the sensations of his lips on hers, and the rub of their hips together, and him moving inside her. Later—much, _much_ _later_ —they ran lazy, contented fingers along each other's goose-bumped flesh. They spoke of things like magic and days of keeping the peace of the realm. She kept it to herself that she hoped they would start a family right away, and that he wouldn't be going to do anything too dangerous.

          Months passed, glorious and tender, but she was not yet with child; he was out often enough that she didn't think they'd had much of a chance to try. He came home to her after an episode out with his brother, terribly angry and bitter. It was the first time she had seen him that way since the days when Thor could goad him into trouble. In hindsight, she must not have reacted the way he must have been looking for to. He had been ranting about how his "bumbling oxen" of a brother deserved the throne as much as an actual ox and yet, without warning, he was telling her to forget that he had opened his mouth in a calm, quiet voice. When he left, she didn't see him again for two weeks.

                    The first time she asked if there was someone else, she knew that he could lie or he could tell the truth. He chose the latter, though it would have hurt her less if he had chosen to lie. It seemed to relieve him, telling her of his infidelity. He maintained that he wanted another chance but she was quietly devastated. How could he? Hadn't she told him, already, that there was no one else for her? Why would he hurt her in this way? Would she ever recover?

          A year went by; he was still her husband, and she was still his wife. Though they worked on it, making time for each other and trying to recapture what love they had before, their marriage was not the same. He could tell that her faith in him was shaky and that the trust was gone. She could tell that it only added to the strain between them. They had their sort of revival when she conceived, birthing twin sons sometime later. It was enough to make them both happy and content on the surface for a time.

                Years ticked on, and rumors in the realms had his bastards all over the place, children without a humanoid form. She tried to ignore it, and tell herself that even if she did not have her husband's full attention, she had his sons. But all illusions are fragile things when held to the light.

          Her suspicions came to a head again when Odin placed a girl in the realm of Mists and gave her free-range to do with it what she would. The girl she could forgive, but the girl's father had finally crossed his wife one too many times. She confronted him out of anger, betrayal biting in her words. She accused of him that the rumors of bastard children were true, even after the birth of Narfi and Nari.

          She wasn't prepared yet again, for the admission of guilt on his part but there it was, tumbling out of his mouth, pointed and sharp like he didn't understand why she didn't already know. Crushed and tired of trying to salvage what wreckage there was of their marriage, she demanded to be set free of having to see him. It hurt too much to. She would see him once a year with their sons until they were adults, and would remain his wife. He had no right to request that she remain his in more than name only but he still asked it of her. If she could have said no and if she could have warmed her bed with someone else, the mess they were in would have been over long before. If he was bodily tied to a rock she wondered if his infidelity would end or if his lure would just bring his cohorts to his side.

                Jaded and heart-weary, she removed herself from the equation. The first few years were the hardest with Asgard being all a twitter with opinions on what one should do or not do in her situation. The whispers died the slow death of any good scandal, giving way to new and more interesting gossip. It took ten years to forgive him enough to hear an apology. Another fifteen for the pain to give way to a dull ache that felt suspiciously like hunger. He asked her, that first time in forever, when they lay tangled again, what it was that kept her bound to him. She'd given him the only answer she could. When she made a vow, or a promise, or a commitment, or gave anything akin to her word to herself or others, she kept it.

                Only seeing her once a year, he didn't hide his affection for her. She wished, not for the first time, that he could be happy with just her; maybe that would be enough for her to try again. Years went on in this way. Fate cut their twins down before reaching a proper majority. Those were the darkest years between them, seeing each other once a year to heap the blame between them. Nothing could soothe the wounds the parents had in place of their children. She was empty in a way that nothing could touch. Once or twice, she sought to stave off the numbness with him. It did little other than bruise them both.

          A strange thing happened, fourteen years after the death of their last twin: Loki mothered a foal. It had eight legs and was entirely a surprise to those who heard of it, and how it came to be. She couldn't hide her embarrassment; there was a particular shame to being the wife of a brood mare. Her only consolation was that her husband's embarrassment was greater than her own. He gave the horse to Odin who used it as his steed once it was grown, having only enough motherly instinct to nurse and wean the foal. Few ever dared mention the incident in his presence, and even fewer survived the endeavor.

                The years stacked up like pages in the Eddas that the humans so liked to write. Some years festered old wounds. Some shone like polished metal in the sun. Still yet, there were some years that were so bleak that they disappeared altogether. During these she missed her sons the most. She remained faithful to her husband, and he remained a self-contained enigma. His attention finally shifted from sexual partners to something else, but he kept that close to the chest.

          The day that Thor was to ascend the throne her husband threw a plot into motion. She had no idea it would mean the death of the man she had loved for so many years. Every twist in the tale sent her head spinning particularly, the revelation that her husband was not Æsir, but Jǫtunn, small for his race. Why hadn’t the twins shown signs of their father’s hidden heritage? It was at the funeral that she received her own very private shock.

        She had thought she would feel free if he perished, but she was still as bound to him as before.

          He emerged again in Midgard, some years later, and made himself a criminal, but fell to his brother and a team of Midgardians. She felt mortified. She had known he could be cold, and known that there was anger in him. It seemed a stranger had replaced him. Still... she couldn't denounce him. She knew he deserved his punishment, sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. To abandon him was to forsake her vows, she felt. Those months he lived in the prison, she visited him twice; once right after the trial, and the second on an anniversary of one of the twins' deaths. She had to account for the year she thought him dead, she rationalized. In the back of her mind, she knew she was a glutton for her own punishment; punishment for not seeing his drop into madness. It was well within her expectations during her visits that he would ask for her help in escaping, but he never did.

                    The Dark Elves’ return heralded the beginning of another set of events that resulted in his supposed death. His adoptive mother's untimely end was unbearable; at least she knew it was for him. It was another loss to eat at his sanity. She felt the death of her Queen as truly as any other Æsir. That paled, personally, compared to the loss of her gracious mother-in-law. The Queen's sons banded together, and the estranged brothers undertook a chase to get vengeance. When Thor returned alone, she didn't understand why she wasn't free of her bond with her husband. If he had died, wouldn't she have felt it? She kept expecting to feel it. Borrowing madness from her husband, she worried that promise had been to herself that she would never love another. But she had made her vow to him at their wedding.

          She should be free if he was dead, at least of the bond she'd had to him in life.

          She hunted for clues on the Dark World, though she may as well have sorted every grain of sand on the planet. She turned her attention to Asgard. Her mad husband wouldn't have returned looking like himself, she thought. He wouldn't give up the anonymity that his "death" had provided him with. But who would he want to be? Only one guise made sense to her. There was only one person he would take the place of, in her mind.

       The throne room had been rebuilt, looking just as opulent as it had been before. She felt brazen—perhaps—because upon seeing the empty throne, she marched up the steps and took a seat.

          Odin arrived sometime around dark, and she felt particular pleasure in surprising him. He lit the throne room and stared at her from his one eye.

          "I've been thinking," she intoned, voice rusty as though from both disuse and emotion, "This life is too hard to live without someone else. You and I, my king; we've both lost the ones we thought would go with us from this life to the next." Here, she took the off-chance that it might not work and left the throne, pausing before Odin. "You and I, my king, are bereft, but we could brave the storm... together."

          She leaned in close, putting one hand on his shoulder, one on his face, and pressed her lips at the grizzled maw. She landed on her behind as she tripped, pushed away. He stood over her, looking like Odin, hiding his real face behind the illusion.

          He knew that there was no hiding. Just the fact that she had gotten as close to him as she had—fully intending to follow through—had been enough.

          "I'm expected to give an audience. You'll wait until I'm done, and then we will speak in private."

          She stayed out of sight until "Odin" had declared he would see no one else. She stepped from behind the throne right into his strong grip. They marched through the parts of the palace where they were the least likely to be seen. Where they were heading, she didn't recognize. As he pushed her through the small, hidden, gilded door, she had the wild thought that he had brought her here to kill her. She turned to face him, seeing not his Odin illusion, but her husband, in all his green and gold and black trappings, wearing an expression that was hard to read.

          "I would ask how you knew, but I suppose it has something to do with our marriage and your vows."

          "I turned over every stone on Svartlfheim, expecting to find some sign of your death, but when there was none. I concluded you were still alive and assumed that you would be in Asgard, with the only identity you could want: the King's."

          "I forget how deductive your powers of reason are," he said, advancing on her. She stood her ground, not wanting to betray her wariness of her husband, especially if he was only closing in to end her. She wouldn't face that death as a coward.

          He reached out, long fingers touching a tendril of her hair. Voice low and entrancing, he murmured, "Should I be worried that you'll run off to tattle to Thor?"  She knew the touch of his fingertips to her person were less to do with desire and more to do with tripping up any acts she was putting on. She could see it in his hooded eyes—no hunger for her ever held the malicious glint that sparkled like madness in the blue depths.

          "What's Thor got to do with this?" came out more breathy than she preferred. It had been too long, and the last time she had seen him, touching—or anything like it otherwise—was impossible. Muddled as she was, she pressed on. "I wish you didn't have to ask, Loki... But that would solve more than just this hiccup for you."

                That seemed to linger in the air between them for several long heartbeats. The words were perhaps long-overdue and they weren't as strong as she had wanted them to be. When they didn't break the tension, she gave him what he wanted. "I'll breathe not one word to anyone about your deception," she said, magic sealing the words.

          He relaxed, almost visibly, at her promise, trailing his fingers from shoulder to her hand, slipping his in with hers. She nearly stopped breathing, the touch not frightening, but stirring. His lips brushed against hers, and she suppressed a shiver of pleasure and excitement.

          It had been documented somewhere that Sigyn was the Goddess of Fidelity. She was said to inspire loyalty, faithfulness, and just obedience. But she was never just an inspiration. She was bound to keep her promises for more than a sense of duty.

          She was bound by her word, and however much pain they had caused over the years, bound by her feelings. The boy whom she had first met in the library and the man whom she had loved and who had broken her heart: they were the same. And he was asking her to keep his secrets. She was submerged, once more, into the heady and cold heat of her husband’s embrace. There were no questions left between them. Just shared air and quickly leaving fabric.

_“'Cause nobody else gave me a thrill_

_With all your faults, I love you still now_

_And it had to be you, it just had to be you_

_It had to be you…”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
